“Hush!” commanded Olaf sternly. “When next we fight in Norway it will be as Christian men, and there will be no such heathen manners. Even as I learned in Ireland, the dead are sacred, and whether slain in battle or dying in their homes, their bones must rest and not serve any heathen use.”
Thore bowed his head, as if humbly accepting the rebuke; all the while he was thinking grimly with what tender Christian care Earl Haakon would treat the body of King Olaf, when it came into his keeping.
One evening, their last upon the “Alruna,” for they skirted the coast of Norway, Olaf sat with Bishop Sigurd. The king was gazing at his cross-hilted sword. “My father,” he said, with a humility in his tone very touching in the sturdy viking, “there was the Emperor Constantine. He saw the Cross in the heavens as the sign of his conquest. I would I could conquer my kingdom by the Cross. I am but a sinful man, and know but how to meet my enemy with my sword. Now I seem to see all the old gods, Odin and Thor, and the war hosts of Valhalla, looking angrily down upon me because I would give their land, the Norraway they have held so long, to the Christ. Last night I dreamed me of a combat in the heavens. There were the war-gods, with Thor at their head, and he did challenge the Christ upon His cross,—the silent, dying Christ. Thor held his swinging, crashing hammer before the face of the Nazarene, who answered not his defying. Then I
